My slow journey to infinity

With the experience of the first level and the confidence brought by defeating the BOSS, the strategy for the second level is much faster.

It took more than 20 days to breach the first level, nearly a month. Today is the eighth day since players set foot on the second level. The latest information from the front line is that the strategy team has entered the maze area.

The expansion of combat power and improvement in skills of the strategy group can be seen with the naked eye. The large base of high-end players has brought about abundant material output. With the exchange of resources, the strategy efficiency will naturally be greatly improved.

Aqua regia has also been flowing recently...well, it has moved to [Talan Village], which is the last supply station before the second-floor maze.

The two of them had been hunting in the vast grassland for several days, and today was a day of rest.

During this period, Aqua Regia's [Collection] skill became very powerful. With a proficiency level of 700, almost two wasps can dig out a poisonous needle. The current market price of each poisonous needle is about 1,200 kels, and The market is vast.

Only with money can we have the foundation to do things.

Unlike the last supply depot on the first level, Talan Village is not a large town. It is a village built inside the mountain after hollowing out a flat-topped hill. The facilities are quite complete, and the weapons level of the blacksmith shop is quite high.

Of course, what attracts aqua regia is not its location close to the maze area, but the mineral, saltpeter mine.

Recently, Wang Shui has been exploring the degree of simulation in SAO. He originally had saltpeter on hand, and he dug it out himself, but the quantity was very small.

Yes, everything can be mined from the mine points. The same mine point can produce both iron and silver. Saltpeter is a very rare mineral, and the NPC purchase price is very low. It is a very contradictory miscellaneous mineral.

When he was mining, Aqua Regia wanted to play with the saltpeter. He didn't start testing it until recently, but he quickly ran out of fun and had no place to replenish it.

Because the Wasp money printing machine was on, Aqua Regia had to go back to the first floor from time to time to fight for man-eating grass with low-level players in the dense forest. During this period, there were also strange legends on the first floor.

Roughly speaking, for a period of time in the dense forest area, not a single man-eating plant monster was spawned. There was a legend among low-level players that when the second layer was opened, the monster resources on the first layer would slowly deplete. Players who were dawdling on the first floor quickly came to the second floor.

Legend has it that when flying around, the source of the trouble was operating the Wasp money printing machine on the vast savanna on the second level.

He has never had time to mine, but things turned around yesterday - the professional businessman who helped Aqua Regia sell and process various metal ingots (copper, iron, tin, lead, silver, etc.) and wasp stings gave him a second-level mining The resource industry report wanted to secretly urge him to dig high-grade minerals.

Then Aqua Regia saw a cutie named "Saltpeter" among a pile of goods with strange names such as "Planck Iron Ore", "Planck Steel Ingot", and "Orr Silver Ingot".

The price of a group of 20 pieces of saltpeter is 100 col, the state is ore, and the weight is 1 kilogram. The ores in SAO were of extremely high purity. The iron ore made from simple iron was silvery white, which made Aqua Regia both surprised and happy. So when he saw the saltpeter in this condition and price, Aqua Regia almost shed tears.

The report was received yesterday, and only Tallan Village has sales. Wang Shui arrived here today and rounded up all the inventory of the ore and metal materials store that is also operated by the blacksmith shop, totaling 242 groups.

When Aqua Regia returned to the small independent house under the team's name, Shino was already grinding sulfur and charcoal. Speaking of which, they just burned the charcoal today, and even the covered iron bucket for burning charcoal was just bought in the morning, while brushing the wasps. Making charcoal is the ultimate use of their time.

"How about saltpeter?" This was the first thing Shino said when he saw Aqua Regia. She was even more enthusiastic about these things than Aqua Regia.

"No problem. Has the iron pan been tested?"

Shino was grinding in the living room. There was a large open kitchen to her right, with two large continuous stoves and two deep-belly iron pots placed on them.

"I've tried it. It boils water very quickly, can gradually cool it down, and can control the temperature. There's no need to invest additional fuel in the kitchen."

"Tsk, enviable unlimited energy." Aqua regia smiled and began to fill half a pot of water into the iron pot, then added saltpeter and began to heat.

It is impossible to judge the purity of the saltpeter, and we do not know whether SAO will add some impurities to it. To be on the safe side, the aqua regia is going to be recrystallized twice.

After heating and dissolving a few pieces of saltpeter, the resulting solution is very clear, which is much easier than leaching with saltpeter. Continue adding saltpeter to the aqua regia into the pot until the solution becomes viscous. After slightly lowering the temperature, white crystals precipitate. At this time, filter directly with cotton cloth.

The aqua regia was not washed and filtered frequently because he cut a strip of cotton cloth and ignited it with a flint. The strip of cotton cloth burned very quickly like a lit fuse.

It shows that most of the crystals filtered out are potassium nitrate, which can be directly cooled and crystallized. The output after that was naturally very high. After all, the ore thrown in by the aqua regia was of high purity and in huge quantities.

Next to her, Sinon used a small stove to burn a thick stone slab that had been set up. She carefully controlled the stone slab to remain in a slightly hot state. The recrystallized saltpeter would bake moisture here. After a while, not only should the fire be stopped, but the state of the saltpeter should also be paid attention to.

The dried saltpeter also needs to be ground finely, and then the blending begins.

Speaking of which, the mechanical scales used to weigh heavy goods were not available in the store. Wang Shui was familiar with the blacksmith shop NPC on the first floor and spent a lot of money to buy their old scales.

Since you have spent time and effort on it, don’t be too petty.

The first step is to add the same finely ground sulfur to the finely ground charcoal powder, shake it with a fine pastry sieve and knead it thoroughly, and sift out any possible lumps. The ingredients are well baked and pure, so there are no lumps.

After that, add potassium nitrate and dry and finely ground sugar and mix thoroughly. This process is carried out in a dry wooden barrel.

Then, add water in the same way as kneading dough, slowly mix and slowly infiltrate, and carefully mix evenly until it becomes muddy. Then transfer it to a warm stone plate for baking, but the open flame must be turned off, as the water will greatly affect the effect. , but you have to be careful during the baking process.

The mud of the mixture is relatively viscous, and after it has dried a little, Aqua Regia brought a wooden porous sieve. The size of the holes is the same size as the fine drill, and the diameter is about 1 mm by visual inspection.

Put the medicinal mud into the porous sieve, then squeeze it gently with a mallet to let it come out a little, and then use wood chips to scrape off the exposed medicine to form small flat cake-shaped particles.

During the aqua regia granulation process, Shino had re-fired a concave slate in another room. When the temperature dropped a bit, the aqua regia poured small black granules from a small wooden bucket into it and gently turned it over with a wooden shovel to dry it.

There is no way, I don’t have professional drying equipment, and I’m not in the mood to wait for it to dry. The quantity is small and the space is large, so it’s not too dangerous.

The above process is going on continuously. From the first batch of dried black medicine, a little aqua regia is separated out and placed on paper, which is then taken outdoors and lit.

The black powder erupted with bright red and white light, dazzling and rapid. The thick paper underneath was only a little browned at first, but the remaining high temperature still made it burn.

The good news is that there are very few impurities after burning, but there is a lot of white smoke. Shino's eyes are full of excitement.

Working until late at night, the two people on top added materials many times. Unexpectedly, the first material to be exhausted turned out to be charcoal.

The final results were piled in five huge airtight glass jars. Yes, the glass jars were very clean, thick, and extremely large. Shui Wang was speechless at the mysterious technology tree in this world.

At three o'clock in the morning, the two of them sat across from each other in the restaurant. On the table were several copper bullet cases with sealed bottoms and several steel-tipped bullets.

"How complete is it now? Can you make a gun?" Shino's tone was not very urgent.

"Now? 50%." As he spoke, Wang Shui took out a few drawings with simple lines drawn on them. They looked like a vise. Wang Shui pointed at the drawings and said,

"There is a lever vise or something similar in the blacksmith shop. They said they made it themselves, so I ordered one. In addition, the bullet casings were pressed out using their waterwheel power press. I brought back the custom-made mold. We may need a permanent venue.”

At this time, Wang Shui paused - he received a text message. After carefully reading the short content, Wang Shui first replied to the message, then confirmed the reply, and then continued to say to Shino:

"With these, the completion rate is 60%. The last step may be troublesome, so don't worry."

Shino wanted to say something else, but her mind was a little confused and she had been kept excited. Now that she was free, sleepiness naturally came over her.

"Go and rest first. The market has been very hot recently, and the demand for enhanced equipment has increased inexplicably. We need to process a batch of wasp stingers, so I won't go to leveling now. I'll finish writing today's experimental records before going to bed."

Shino nodded vaguely and wandered back to his room.

Wang Shui took out a pen and paper and started quickly writing today's observation records on the dining table. There was no professional testing and measuring equipment, and the weighing data was also very important. The five batches of black medicine he made seemed to be similar, but in fact the formulas were somewhat different. Fine-tuning, these records are the basis for future comparison effects.

Of course Wang Shui didn't finish writing in ten minutes. He was just stuck on ten minutes. He guessed that Shino was probably asleep now.

Wang Shui was still wearing home clothes, but changed into a long coat for going out. He put away the documents and pushed out the door.

At night, Talan Village is dark and extremely quiet. The village is built in a hollowed-out mountain. The house Wang Shui and the others rent is on the outskirts of the village, closer to the edge of the second floor, so they can see half of the village. night sky.

The stars are shining brightly.

Wang Shui walked out of the village unhurriedly and came to a remote large rock, feeling the breeze blowing to help him soothe his spirit.

"Is this the place you picked?" A low and flat male voice came from the side, and Wang Shui couldn't help but look at that person.

He wore black trousers and a white shirt that were incompatible with this world, and a thick white coat. His short brown hair looked very casual, and his appearance was even more ordinary, like a powerless office worker.

"What a great lab coat. The ones I remember were all thin, chemical-fiber-looking ones that were in the way and uncomfortable."

"Is this what you want to say?" The middle-aged man glowed faintly like a ghost and continued to ask questions.

"I'm just feeling a little emotional. I'm actually being targeted by you again. Are you planning to give me any reward this time? Or are you just banning me from making guns?"

Wang Shui stared at Kayaba Akihiko, using proactive attacks to cover up his true emotions. He guessed that the man in front of him was not boring enough to learn conversation skills.

Kayaba Akihiko just glanced at Wang Shui, then looked away without any strangeness, and said:

"What caught my attention was the rapid leveling up of you and your teammates. Although it is indeed a bit exaggerated, this method is an old setting. It's just that after SAO was officially put into operation, the world has become a hundred times larger. In [Autonomous Intelligent AI] ] Maintenance caused the abnormal number of wasps.”

"But these are still within the controllable range. The wasps did not cause too many additional casualties. However, the method of using toxins to brush insect monsters will become worse in the future. Probably the monsters' blood volume will become much higher. There is an abnormal increase in resistance."

The latter sentence was Wang Shui's addition, but his clever way of showing off didn't get any feedback from Kayaba Akihiko.

"Yes, so you can still farm Wasps, you can accumulate money, and you can help a large number of players accumulate weapon enhancement levels, but you can't continue to complete that attempt."

Why! Wang Shui really wanted to ask loudly and passionately, and then convince Kayaba Akihiko by talking like the protagonist of a hot-blooded comic.

But he's not that kind of person, and Kayaba isn't that kind of villain.

"Just now, I thought I could convince you. I thought you were the kind of person I imagined. You created this world for your hobbies and interests. You wanted to watch it grow and watch history happen and be interpreted. I thought you would be a little emotional. But I seem to have guessed wrong. You are still a rational researcher and don’t want your experiments to have accidents. Ha, there seems to be no difference between an idealistic madman and a rational and scientific madman?"

"You seem to be trying to piss me off? It won't do you any good."

"Yes, great God of Creation, you used death to trap me here so that you can observe at will. How much do you think I think more highly of you? I used to have many bosses, some made me work hard, some made me work hard, That is to say, they are not standing in front of me. If they were standing here like you, I would curse them to death in my heart."

"You seem to be only 14 years old?" Kayaba Akihiko suddenly went off topic.

"Wow, you're spying on me. It's a metaphor. It's just a metaphor. I'm just, very unwilling to do so. I've been working hard to become stronger, and then I suddenly found something I'm interested in and want to work hard. It's just for fun! It's just for fun! That's all, why since I was little, you so-called adults, just want to stop me from playing! Stop me from doing the things I am interested in! What about you! Kayaba, aren't you also playing! Use more than 200,000 lives to do it Materials to play with!”

Kayaba was silent for a while and then said:

"I can't refute, but I can't sympathize either. I can only roughly understand what you mean."

"I really appreciate you for understanding. After all, you are the creator of this world, you are a genius. I just want to make some more creations of mine in the world you created. I just want to get a share of the pie, and even It will bring more possibilities to your world, but you still want to strangle me.”

As Wang Shui spoke, he entered into his true emotions. He was now making a MOD for a game, but the game author didn't like it and wanted to ban him.

"In any case, the appearance of thermal weapons here is not just a change in the style of the world..."

"Are you worried that heavy firepower will make defeating the BOSS a child's play? Don't worry, probably no one in this world understands firearms to that extent, and automatic firepower and large-caliber weapons cannot be made so casually. "

Faced with Wang Shui's excuse, Kayaba Akihiko waved his finger, and a two-meter-tall metal tower fell heavily to the ground. Shui Wang instantly broke out in a cold sweat.

"Um, listen to my explanation."

Kayaba Akihiko said calmly: "I would not look up any player's specific data, nor would I record videos of a certain player. Although it seems a bit contrived, I still want to explain my position. I am the creator and controller of the world. He is not the owner of your soul."

"what do you mean?"

"I mean - you are so creative. So I checked your data, and in the normal data, I found this thing. Although I don't understand chemical engineering, but now the Internet is very developed, just relying on pictures can If you find similar results, a scaled-down lead chamber, are you going to start an industrial revolution in my world?"

"Of course not!" Don't worry about the problem for now, deny it first. "I still have my original position. My teammates and I just like firearms. If some basic chemicals are missing, we have to make them ourselves. If you provide concentrated acid, why would I go to all this trouble?"

Okay, throw the pot back first.

On the surface, Wang Shui was still trying to argue, but what Kayaba Akihiko didn't know was that Wang Shui had already won, and he was so happy that he went to heaven.

A few minutes ago, I received a message from Kayaba Akihiko. Wang Shui almost suffered cardiac arrest and died suddenly. Of course, he was not afraid of Kayaba finding trouble with guns. They are all things from your world anyway. Anyway, Wang Shui was just making guns for fun. If it's closed, just close it.

What Wang Shui feels most guilty of is his bug-like skill bar...

Then Kayaba Akihiko said that Wang Shui's data was normal - okay, stable. Although Wang Shui didn't know why the data was normal, just like he didn't know why the helmet made by Kayaba could make people fully sneak, but it didn't matter. , as long as it does not affect his ability to protect himself.

Aqua regia was very happy, but Kayaba became quiet, as if he was bothered by the request of aqua regia to provide concentrated acid.

What is he hesitating about? You don’t really want to provide industrial products, do you? Won't……

"Wait a minute, brother Kayaba, I have a very bold guess. A lot of output in your world relies on refreshing, and many industrial products are directly stuffed in, and then your world is replaced by [Autonomous Intelligent AI] Managed maintenance and completion... It won’t be to complete the output settings and start to lead the industrial revolution, right?!”

Then under Wang Shui's shocked eyes, the shameful old brother Kayaba Akihiko nodded.